How I lost 40 Pounds Looking Through My Telescopes
Yikes. I used to weigh 220 pounds. I’m six feet tall, 44 years old and I don’t exercise much except to haul out my 75 pound telescopes several times a week, and I love to drink the occasional beer. Not the cheap-ass light beers, but the heavy-duty, space-time warping, heavier than a naked singularity beers full of flavor and hoppy goodness. Mind you, I only drink one or two a day, but these aren’t your typical beers, they pack more calories than a chocolate covered coronal mass ejection (I know, I’m reaching with that one).
Ok, so lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time telling people how I’ve lost 40 pounds over the last few months (Oh my god Tony! Look at you! You look great! How did you do it? And so fast! My goodness! Jeez, I must have been a pig before) and I thought, what the hell, I’d make a post about it. It never ceases to amaze me how some topics really capture people’s attention. The universe be damned, how did you lose that weight man! i predict this post becomes one of my most popular. Next, I’ll write about my desire to go on Oprah and tell the world about my crush on the RocketBoom Lady.
Here it is: the secret. I did it using a modified and simplified version of the Hacker’s Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition by John Walker.
This diet was designed by an engineer for engineeer-types, so it really resonated with me. The basic idea is simple: eat less than you burn. I know, piece of cake, huh? (err, well, I mean piece of rice cake). It also comes with one more very important piece of information: one pound of fat contains 3500 calories. If you want to lose a pound of fat in one week, you must eat 3500 calories LESS than you burn that week.
it’s actually pretty trivial, but it requires work. I am the type of person that when I make my mind up to do something, I focus like a laser beam on that thing till I get it done. So having the drive to do it came naturally. I also kept the above picture around to motivate me.
The only piece of information I needed was that I didn’t have was a good estimate of how many calories I burned everyday in my current lifestyle. I didn’t factor in exercise because I learned from John Walker that you don’t exercise to lose weight, you exercise to get in shape. I mean, one full hour of running only burns up 600 calories, that’s basically a 12 inch Subway sandwich. Besides, exercise makes me tired, I’d rather look through an eyepiece.
With a little trial an error and using the methods in John’s plan, I discovered that with my current lifestyle, I burn 2100 calories every day sitting in front of my computer, downloading astronomy porn, and hauling my telescopes out every other night or so. In order to lose 40 pounds I needed to burn up 140,000 calories. If I wanted to lose that weight in a reasonable amount of time, say four months, I would need to eat 1,200 calories less than I burned up every single day. That’s about half of what I burn up everyday. Way too much.
It actually took me about six months to lose the weight by eating less than I burned. I cut out an average of 700 calories per day to get the weight off. Hell, that was one beer and a grilled cheese sandwich with chips. I could do that.
And I did.
John’s actual plan involved lots of graphing and doing exercises he’s developed to get you in shape without making you crazy. I didn’t do any of that, all I did was figure out how much my body burned over the course of the day while I sat on my ass in front of a computer and ate less than that amount every single day. Over the course of weeks, I noticed a real difference.
The only change in my lifestyle was one less beer and one fattening meal per day, at that rate, my body burned up 700 calories of fat, which over six months came to 40 pounds of fat leaving my body, and I didn’t have to do anything different. I have decided to start running, but only to get in shape, and I don’t do it very much.
There’s a lot more room in my observing parka now though for those extra eyepieces. Now, I weigh 180-185 and that’s about where I should be for my age and height. My gravitational pull has become a little less now.
Technorati Tags: astronomy, weight loss
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6 opinions for How I lost 40 Pounds Looking Through My Telescopes
doubledouble
Jan 29, 2007 at 11:43 am
Good ideas about losing pound! Nice of and thanks for sharing the experiences! hope to read more.
Hsien Lei
Jan 29, 2007 at 12:18 pm
*wolf whistle* Looking good! And being healthy ain’t so bad either. :)
Hsien Lei
Jan 29, 2007 at 12:42 pm
And I have to add that it makes me laugh when our most science-y blog touches on health too. Synergy!!
Julie
Jan 29, 2007 at 11:42 pm
yowzahs, that’s hawt. Grade A astronomer beefcake, ferrr sure.
julie
Jan 30, 2007 at 11:46 am
Tony,
Oh, no….your gravitational pull is less now….
you disappoint me.
You should make yourself fatter so that your attraction is greater….More to love, More physic’al attraction. Fat people get all the gravitational pull, all the gravitational charisma.
Skinny people suck.
The more you are a big tubboat made of lard, the more people are gravitationally attracted to you. That is why fat people are the sh*t. People do not realize the gravitational pull fat people have over skinny people. Fat is where it’s @., YO. Fat is P-H-A-T, fo’ realzzzz, mos def….
yeah, fo’ shizzle.
You don’t know what you’ve done, Tony, tsk…tsk….you coulda had it all, ALL–money, fame, women; you coulda had the whole world in the palm of your hands, encircling you, globe-trotting your great fat body orbit, had you simply gained about a trillion billion pounds more. The planets coulda been in the pocket of your large parka, in your husky plus-sized sweater. No telescopes necessary…. You could have been the next American Idol. You could have been twirling Saturn on the tip of your pinky ring finger. YOU BLEW IT TONY! You now need to eat 1,9999,999999,999999 more calories per day to make up for the deficit. Stop thinking WHEATIES, Tony, and think DONUT. think BEER! think HOMER SIMPSON.
!!!!!
You see, world domination does NOT come in the form of an atomic reaction exploding coffee can catalyzed by the specific heat altering properties of Angelina Jolie. World domination comes in the form of extreme FAT MASS accumulation, tipping the scales of gravity in your cosmic direction, and making YOU, glorious all-powerful king fat-ass, the center and core of the entire universe. MUHAHAHAHAHAaaaaaaaahhhh (fat jiggling, maniacal laughter), a million, billion, trillion more fat calories, and the world is MINE! Oh yeah, double f’ing cheeseburger– high five!
Astronomy Buff - Hacker’s Diet Online
Apr 30, 2007 at 8:48 pm
[…] I’ve posted before, I recently lost over 40 pounds, going from 225 to 180 (ish), which is about the right weight for my height (6 feet) and age (44). […]
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